Numbers representing the true cuts to education were then released yesterday by Innovation Ohio

The Kasich administration tried to distant themselves from them and failed, and then OBM attempted to distance themselves from these numbers and didn’t do much of a better job.

Over at Plunderbund they have done a nice job of forecasting how the current skirmish over the education funding cuts is going to shape up. First, numbers come out to show that their is evidence to back up the accusations that education funds will be severely cut. The administration denied that these are the true numbers then referred to them as liberal propaganda, while most likely, they will end up releasing the true cuts to education and they will end up looking a lot like what Innovation Ohio released yesterday. Of course, they won’t look exactly the same, they will tinker with the formal just so they don’t look totaly the same, and then release them.

It doesn’t really matter though what the numbers look like when Kasich administration finally gets around to releasing them, for a couple of reasons. First, some school administrators have already come out and said that the numbers released by Innovation Ohio are close enough and they don’t expect much of a difference when the administration releases theirs. The second argument is the larger one – whether the cuts to education are $3.1 billion or $2.5 billion it doesn’t matter. What matters is that this administration is going out of its way to balance this budget on the backs of school districts and local governments while simultaneously stripping them of much needed revenue and telling them to deal with it. Oh, and this is all happening at the same time when the administration has proposed QUADRUPLING the amount of funds going towards failing charter schools in this state.

The Kasich administration is once again asking the most well off in the state to not even lift a finger while demanding the middle class fork over more money and telling them them they should be happy this is all he is demanding of them. These cuts to education will lead to school districts having to go to the ballot and ask for property tax increases. These increases will be paid by the middle class families and localities that are in the least well off position to do so, putting more pressure on their ability to add to the economy as a whole. This budget is the reverse of Robin Hood.

2 Comments

I don’t know that it is accurate to call the Kasich budget a reverse Robin Hood. King John, i.e. John Kasich, is doing exactly what one would expect King John to do, take from the poor and enrich the wealthy.

I thought Ohio had a progressive income tax. State revenues going disproportionally to the wealthy? Please explain… I have a nice income but my taxes are no great bargin considering what benefits I get from the state!